Military and law enforcement personnel have employed armor-enhanced clothing in order to protect their bodies from gunfire, shrapnel, explosive devices and other harmful ballistic objects. For example, vests, plate carriers, backpack carriers and other upper torso outerwear devices can be enhanced with armor and can come in all shapes and sizes with a variety of optional accessories. In many instances, such devices including multiple plies of material that can be joined along edges to create openings or pockets therein. Such personal wearable devices can also include attachment subsystems such as molle panels and the like, which allow the wearer to attach equipment, gear and even other equipment holders to the device. Examples of such upper torso outerwear devices can be seen, for example, in U.S. Patent Application Publication Nos. 20120174280 to Strum et al., and 20120017347 to Strum et al., the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.
However, even when such clothing is sized according to individual specifications (for example, small, medium and large), the armor-enhanced clothing does not generally fit well, gets bunched up, prohibits smooth movement, results in undesirable gaps between body and clothing, has limited contact points with the body, does not wick sweat and water away, becomes uncomfortable and even hinders the withdrawal and operation of firearms. In specific environments where a user needs to lean in one direction or another, such upper torso outerwear can become inflexible and can restrict or even prevent proper body posturing to carry out desired tasks. For example, when personnel need to lean towards a trigger-firing arm when preparing to discharge a weapon, a rigid upper torso outerwear element might lift up or “post” above the user's shoulder and towards the user's head as the user leans to one side. Such lifting may make it awkward for the user to attain a comfortable and familiar firing position, and may require the user to push down on the outerwear with his or her head to try to counter the lifting force.
Further, shoulder strap systems in the past have been sewn in a fixed and generic angle that may or may not lay on the wearer's shoulders properly. When the shoulder straps are not laying flat and distributing load over the entire surface of the strap, only a leading edge of the strap is taking the hanging load. When the edge takes the load, the wearer can experience pain and discomfort, particularly with armor-enhanced clothing.
Such disadvantages often result in poor performance and can encourage mis-use or even non-use of these protective devices.